emptiness loves emptying
that’s it’s nature
its forms are endless; beyond mind’s conjecture
you can’t arrive
at an apperception of its infinite beingness
by any practice or prayer
it is too ever-present
too intimate
without ever arriving, it’s always here
~
everywhere you look:
.
same old ‘I’
.
.
ever-morphing ‘me’
~
363
analyze and adapt
diagnose and dialogue
formulate and fix
trance, track, tap:
so many ways to place
kiss-it-better
patches on the pain
of fragmentation
we call it healing
and invent new modalities by the minute
to ease the symptoms, which also
multiply by the minute, fattening the catalogue
of official psychological disorders
but until the trickster called time
is exposed and deposed
our little healings are just brief remissions
from the ache of incompleteness
to heal is to make whole
that’s why the true sages carry no band-aids
but go straight to the root of fragmentation
- time -
conjurer of the ‘me’-mirage
with its default sense of separation
and its insatiable appetite for union
they know that the ending of time
restores immeasurable wholeness
- no faith, no belief, no training required
only a willingness to disappear
into now and this and here
~
362
reality
[aka
confusion
disconnection
resentment
frustration
cowardice
grief]
isn’t optional
…
reality
[aka
clarity
intimacy
gladness
ease
courage
joy]
isn’t optional
…
if I scream for a break from this full-on life
with all its dualistic extremes
I’ve gone and forgotten
again
that reality isn’t optional
…
and how extraordinary to find that this
savage wisdom somehow soothes
and silences, softly,
sweetly,
the voice of she-who-screams
~
355
Sometimes the *echoes* come up with a question for this scribbler on her zafu.
Sometimes it’s koan-like, and she sits with it stuck in her jaws, unable to swallow it or spit it out, while her brain reorganizes itself around the seed that’s cracking the conceptual concrete.
Sometimes it’s a direct hit at her self-honesty – slap! This morning’s was one of those.
.
Is your wideawakeness (aka enlightenment, awakening, realization, mindshift…)
big enough to contain every expression of Beingness?
Do you still have preferences for some, and find others a bit freaky?
Are you rattled when disagreed with, and fluffy when folk are in accord?
Do you harbor the notion that others will get to “where you’re at”
and understand you, one day?
.
The reach of your compassion reveals the degree of your wideawakeness:
take a look sister.
.
BOOM
~
352
[From a letter to a friend.]
For decades I had read, been taught, and believed that the Real, by definition, must be omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. But I still believed it was something objective that I had to find, attain or ‘receive’.
What I had to do, I thought, was find where ‘it’ was hiding – or more to the point – why my perception couldn’t perceive ‘it’. Which sounds easy, but dozens of years were spent traipsing around the spiritual circuit without getting one millimeter closer to my quarry.
It was a light-bulb moment for me when it sunk in that if the Real was totally accessible to me (and everyone), perhaps I should persistently ask myself
What’s the one thing I can’t get away from? Ever?
And there it was – here it is. Inescapably intimate. Closer than my heartbeat.
Whenever protest or confusion arose, I’d just switch over to the Great Escape Routine again. And laugh myself silly.
Well, you do have to laugh, don’t you? Imagine. All those years of seeking and sadhana, of surrender and self-inquiry, and here I am, prisoner of the Presence that I am.
Prisoner of the real dinkum Real.
~
347
Vast Presence is always perfectly still.
And yet – as happened today – when a child is injured outside one’s gate and lies screaming in shock and pain, there is action. It is action unclouded by confusion, by conceptualization, by choice. Action simply acts. The child is held and comforted, first aid is applied. She is protected until her mother arrives.
Vast Presence does nothing but be present.
Isn’t it curious that we strive to live in the moment when it’s impossible to find any-where or any-when else but the vastness of the Present, this very moment? We are prisoners of this perfect Presence: there’s no need to seek it, and no possibility of escape!
~
See also – I’m prisoner of a presence
